by Anita Notaro
“Oh well, in that case, come on, I’ll buy you a drink first, you look like you’re parched.”
“No, if I’m having real food, I can’t have alcohol as well, club rules.” Maggie screwed her face up. “Or, at least, my version of them. Toni has us on a strict regime, even flavored water is suspect. She left some foul baked-nut and seed thingy round last night. I meant to throw it out. It’s stinking up the fridge.”
“I’ll take it if you don’t want it. I love nuts and seeds, especially when I’m training.”
“Consider it yours.” She linked arms with him and they headed off to enjoy themselves. “Maybe I could have a white wine spritzer? I won’t tell if you don’t.”
“Traitor.” He slapped her bottom. “I think you look super as you are. You don’t need to diet.”
She kissed him playfully. “That’s why I love you.” It slipped out.
“Whoa, steady on. We hardly know each other.” His laugh was a bit too hearty. But then he kissed her back and Maggie should have felt awkward but somehow she didn’t.
“So, how’s lover boy?” her sister Karen asked when she arrived home around ten, having dashed in first to get the nut thingy for Doug. Karen was twenty-three, good-looking in a sulky way and knew it all.
“Great, we had dinner in The Orchid and he gave me a present when he dropped me off just now.” Maggie held up a cute little see-through plastic purse with a tiny felt teddy on the front.
“I’d rather have Prada.” Karen was big into labels.
“Well, I wouldn’t. It’s the thought that counts. He noticed the zip was stuck in mine the other day. Anyway, what are you watching?”
“Desperate Housewives”
“Any good?”
“Yeah, they’re wild. Mind you, it only makes me more determined never to get married.” She sat up. “How about you? Is Douglas the one?”
“Could be; he’s good-looking, kind—”
Karen made a face. “Yeah, right. Dream on. He’s small and sort of—”
“He is not, he’s the same height as me.”
“Yeah, and you’re barely five foot tall.”
Maggie threw a cushion at her. “That’s not true and you know it. Just because you’re a lanky skinnymalink.”
“Seriously, Mags, what do you see in him?”
“He takes care of me …”
“So does Dad.”
“Look, when you’ve dated as many shits as I have, you really appreciate a nice guy. And Doug is really nice, very considerate, and he makes me laugh.”
“God, you’re sad.” Karen turned up the volume and went back to her fantasy world.
Ellie pulled up outside her parents’ neat, semi-detached house on Thursday evening and hoped it wouldn’t be too much like hard work. She loved her folks—it was one of the reasons she’d never lived abroad—but they were old-fashioned and set in their ways and everything had to be just right. Her mother made Hyacinth Bucket look laid back. Now, even though it was just after 7:30, the kitchen table was set for breakfast and the cereal was already in the bowls, covered in cling film to keep it from going soft overnight. Ellie looked around. It was straight out of a fifties dirndl-skirt TV commercial for kitchens. It still had the original “kitchen cabinet” and the table was Formica and the presses were red and shiny. Oh, and it had wallpaper with cucumbers and tomatoes on.
“Hi, Mum.” Ellie had let herself in and now her mother appeared in from the back door. “Where’s Dad?”
“Out in the shed, fixing something, no doubt planning to leave half of whatever it is all over my kitchen floor. I’ve told him it’s too cold but when did he ever listen to me? How are you, love? Cup of tea?”
“Yes, please. What are you up to?”
“Just about to watch EastEnders. It’s already started. Go in and sit down, the kettle’s just boiled.”
“OK, thanks.” She never could keep up with her mother’s appetite for soaps, but it was usually easy to catch up, although she sometimes got mixed up with Emmerdale and Corrie, which her mother told her was ridiculous, given that one had cows and sheep all over it and the other had lamb’s liver and bacon butties that had never come from a pig. Still, seen one barmaid’s tits and you’d seen them all, she reckoned.
“Ham sandwich, love?”
“No thanks, Mum, I’m on a diet.”
“Ridiculous.” She put a plate of Chocolate Goldgrain down in front of them. Ellie’s mother was not one to agree with you easily. Not unless you were making your will in her favor, she guessed, and even that was pushing it. “Your father was just saying how tired you look this last while, Eleanora. It’s not eating properly. Why don’t you come home for the weekend and let me look after you?”
“I’m fine Mum, thanks anyway.” Ellie would’ve sooner had laser surgery on both eyes without an anesthetic. Her parents were just so … so careful, really. Everything was thought out, like the one time they nearly took the family to Butlins, in Mosney,County Meath, and then decided there was a risk of mosquito bites. Small, admittedly, but after they’d consulted their GP, the local health center and the Department of Tropical Medicine or something, they decided not to take the risk. They weren’t short of money at all, yet they measured out everything, even the small sherry they allowed themselves at weekends. They rarely went out, at least not since that one case of food poisoning in Dublin in about 1958, unless one of the girls dragged them out for dinner or Sunday lunch as a treat, and that was usually Ellie. Her sister Orla was about as frivolous as her mother, except when it came to herself, and Claire had been away too long. All that, and their house was worth three-quarters of a million, according to spotty Sam, their next-door neighbor but one, and they were rattling around in it.
“How’s Orla?”
“Fine, she was asking about you. You should call in and see her new kitchen.”
“I will, maybe next week.” The problem was that it was easier to get away from the Taliban. Visiting Orla required a week’s leave and a visa.
“Mrs. Mooney’s sister died.”
There was always someone. Her parents had a morbid fascination with death. “Which one?” Ellie could barely remember Mrs. Mooney and had no idea if she’d one or twenty-one sisters.
“The eldest, Maura. The big C. I couldn’t bring myself to go round there, even. You know me. Dad called, though. I made them soda bread.”
“Nice.” Ellie was nibbling on a biscuit before she realized and stuffed it quickly into her pocket. Her mum was terrified of hospitals, doctors, death, the VHI and BUPA even and her father was only marginally better, so Ellie could never understand how she was the type who’d sign herself into a clinic at the first feel of a spot on her ankle, never mind her lungs.
Her father came in at nine o’clock to the second, and as always pretended to be surprised that the news was on.
“Oh, is it that time? Glad I made the headlines, so. What’s happening, El?”
“Hi, Dad.” Ellie rose to kiss him just as her mother passed him his nightly half ham sandwich, again covered in cling film and probably made at about three o’clock yesterday. The edges sprang up nicely as soon as he stuck his finger in the cellophane and the smell of sweating pig hit her nostrils.
“Want some, El?”
She’d sooner have Whiskas. “No thanks, Dad.”
“She’s on a diet. Again.” Her mother poured him a cup of stewed, lukewarm treacle and milked and sugared it for him as she had been doing for yonks.
“No need, you’re grand as you are, just big-boned.”
There was only one phrase Ellie hated more than big-boned and that was “fine girl y’are,” which was what horrible Uncle Jim said every time he met her.
“So, what’s the story?”
“Nothing much, Dad, working away as—”
“Shush, love, just till I hear what’s happening.” He reached for the remote and turned the news up to glass-shattering levels and that was the end of that.
It was after eleven by th
e time Ellie finally turned in, having watched Crime Scene Investigation and TV3 news, exactly the same as the nine o’clock on RTE down to the newsreader—shorter bob, slightly different shade of luminous pink jacket, no Newbridge silverware—and resisted all offers of lemon sherbet, clove rock and bull’s eyes.
Her phone rang just as she turned off the light.
“Have you had your celery stick?” It was Maggie, giggling.
“No, but I’d say you’ve had a bloody mary with yours, by the sound of you.”
“Nope, I had crispy duck though, with all the trimmings. I asked for celery peelings with the veggies but they gave me carrot instead. The waiter was very cute but hadn’t a word of the lingo. He thought celery was sherry and kept bringing me little glasses of Harveys Bristol Cream.” Maggie was on a roll. “The place was gorgeous though, very posh. I kept looking round, expecting Toni to jump out of the jungle of greenery or swing from the nappy of one of the gold baby Buddhas.”
“I’d say she was most likely swinging from a chandelier tonight, darling. G & T was bringing her for dinner in his private plane.”
“Oh my God, where?”
“No idea. She’s saving that for Saturday. I’ll tell you something, I’m beginning to feel as if I’d do anything for a bit of lovin’ myself, Mags.”
“Romance or a ride?”
“Sweetie, I’d settle for a shish kebab and a shag, thank you. He wouldn’t even have to brush his teeth.”
“That bad, huh?”
“Spent the evening with my folks.”
“Not a bundle of laughs, I’d say.” Maggie knew them well. They were as different from hers as George and Laura Bush were from Bill and Hil.
“Give Pammy a call, by the way, she’s a bit down.”
“I will, I promise, first thing tomorrow. Sorry, I know I’ve been a bit scarce lately, but, I think I’m in luuurve.”
“Good for you. I’m jealous. Lusty love or real love?”
“A bit of both.”
“The ‘I want to ride you senseless’ kind or the ‘I want to have your babies’ kind.”
“Wooh there, babies, that’s serious. He’s just so nice, so good to me. Makes me feel special. Mind you, Karen more or less said she’d sooner date Willie O’Dea.”
“Which one’s he?”
“Minister for Defense, I think. Small, at least he looks it on TV. Big moustache.”
“Oh yeah.” There wasn’t really any reply to that one. “Well, eh, don’t mind her. As long as you like him.”
“I do, El. I really do. He makes me feel like a princess.”
“Princess is good.”
Twenty-seven
Jack loved Saturday mornings. He read all the papers at leisure, although some of the articles were questionable, especially in the magazines. Anything to fill a supplement, he reckoned, as he skipped past a full two pages on what to do with leftover kangaroo steaks, with step-by-step instructions in glorious color. He couldn’t begin to imagine what the adult population of Bohola, Co. Mayo, or some other small Irish village, would make of that one. Come to think of it, kangaroo was on the menu in a place in Mullingar he’d passed through last year, so maybe he was just out of touch.
The girls were playing with cut-out cardboard dolls with real hair, dressing and undressing them faster than Naomi Campbell at London Fashion Week. They were like a three-dimensional version of what his sister did with the back page of Bunty when they were kids, except miles more sophisticated. Sam’s doll was black and called Chloe and had four different afro arrangements for hair. She was currently dressed in fishnet tights, over-the-knee shiny boots and a skirt that made Britney look overdressed—all of this in paper, although not nearly as flimsy or as hand blackening as they used to be. These were all wet-look and garishly bright. They even had real bits of jewelry and Sam had spent an hour sobbing because Rashers had got one of Chloe’s earrings and it was now languishing somewhere in his colon and would probably require an operation that would cost an arm and a leg to remove. And their vet, Mr. Costigan, had already nearly reported them to the ISPCA a few months back when Jess had stuck a blue felt pen up Rashers’ bum and tried to teach him to write by wriggling, just because she’d seen him trailing his bottom along the floor at some point earlier in the day. Still, with any luck the earring and its minuscule back fastener—essential, according to Sam—would be excreted in due course, and, as he would shortly be inspecting his own pooh if Nora had anything to do with it, it wasn’t really a hassle to keep an eye on Rashers’.
He poured another cup of coffee and marveled at how clean the place was. And it smelt good, too. The fridge was well stocked because the shopping had been done yesterday and there was a—what had she called it again?—oh yes, medallions of pork in white wine and saffron sitting looking very tasty—suspiciously so—on the top shelf. It was her only flaw, and it wasn’t even a major one, because she nearly always almost got it right. A bit of a garlicky flavor in the trifle, a sliver of anchovy or something similar in the bread and butter pudding, but hell, they were all eating way better than they ever had, even when Lorna was around, and that loaf thing the other day was actually very tasty.
No, life was good for all of them right now. He must remember to give her a bonus, or buy her something nice—Jane Malone seemed to be the new big thing, according to Sarah, who suddenly knew everything about women’s cosmetics and had asked him to bring her back fruitti de la mare or something equally poserishsounding from his next trip abroad, because she claimed her skin was dry. Sam had been patting her own face with something every morning since Sarah had told them about her spots. It was amazing what having an older cousin was doing for Sam’s development. Most of her friends were still into Jungle Book. Kate was probably still laughing about his phone call last night—he had asked her to pick up a tube of the cream for him to give Sarah. “It’s Jo Malone, idiot, and the cream is Crème de la Mer. And it costs about two hundred euros for a week’s supply,” Kate had said, exaggerating only slightly. “And if Sarah’s been using mine I’ll beat her senseless. It was a present from Bill’s boss.”
“Dad, I really love Nora.”
“Me too, darling.” He flicked through the Star, wondering again how it was possible he knew absolutely nothing about Big Brother, given the twenty-eight pages of color devoted entirely to a transvestite, a Brad Pitt in Thelma & Louise lookalike and a bleached-blond bodybuilder wearing leopard-skin underwear who looked like a carry-over from the A Team. He’d better keep up, he was slipping badly, next thing he’d be wearing a paisley dressing gown and whinging every time he missed The Archers.
“Do you really?” His youngest daughter was poking him in the ribs.
“What?”
“Love Nora?”
“Yes. No. Not exactly, no.”
“Why not? She loves us. She told me so yesterday and that includes you.”
“Yes, well, I do love her in the same way you do, of course …” He cleared his throat and swiveled round in his seat. God, was this what telling them about sex was going to be like in years to come? He hoped not. Still, Bill had told him he’d tried to explain to Sarah how intercourse was best saved for that special someone and preferably after he’d bought two rings so heavy you could barely reach for your glass of Bolly with your left hand and all she’d said was, “Yes, Dad, I know all that, but is a hand job OK?” He shrugged the horrible thought away and turned with a bright smile to his baby. “I’m very fond of Nora, darling, she’s a lovely girl, woman, eh, I mean nanny.”
“Yes, but—”
“No buts, off you go and get dressed. We’re going to see Rembrandt at the National Gallery.”
“Is he like Gandalf?”
“No, not exactly. Now run along and I’ll tell you all about it in the car.”
“What she means,” Georgia—who had been for a sleep-over and was now playing with the girls—sidled up to him just as Jessie headed off, “is would you have sex with Nora?” Oh God, here it comes.
> “Georgia, that’s not appropriate. I’m Nora’s employer and of course I—”
“Do you fancy her, then? You know, the way you fancy that teacher in Jessie’s playschool.”
“I do no such thing, young lady, I—”
“Do too. I heard Dad asking you would you give her one and you said yes.”
He had absolutely no recollection of ever having mentioned her to Bill, he didn’t even know her name, for Christsakes. Mind you, there was that drunken conversation about barmaids the last night Kate had cooked dinner for all of them here. He didn’t remember much about that, either. That’s it, he was going to have to cut down on the booze.
“If I did say something like that, and I’m sure I did not, well, I probably meant I’d give her … one … of … my … books. She mentioned she was a fan and—”
“Yeah, right, well that’s not what Rocky O’Toole meant at school the other day when he said—”
“Young lady,” he reached up to his full height and prepared to cut this shorter than a hooker’s foreplay, “I have no interest whatsoever in what Rocky or 50 Cent or whoever else in your class said and neither should you, so please—”
“Uncle Jack, 50 Cent is a rapper.” She nudged him and giggled and looked mortified for him.
“Well, you know who I mean, the one with all the freckles. You pointed him out when we were all in Eddie Rocket’s last week.”
“William Goldsmith?”
“Who?”
“Dollar Bill, that’s what his dad is called at work. Herman White told us. Anyway, he’s the fat kid with—”
Jack was getting very confused. “That’s it, Dollar Bill, what did I call him?”
“50 Cent.”
“Same thing. And don’t ever let me hear you calling him a fat kid again, he might be very sensitive.” He was relieved the conversation appeared to have taken a more straightforward turn.
“Nora calls herself a fat-bottomed girl and slaps her butt when she sings that Queen song to Jessie and Sam sometimes.” She gyrated like a noughties version of Uma Thurman in Pulp Fiction and she had all the actions. He nearly corpsed.